


Not A Part Of Your Machine

by ossgray



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, 僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crossover, F/M, Gen, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, Light Angst, Maria Stark's Good Parenting, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Tony Stark goes to UA, Tony Stark has a quirk, Tony Stark-centric, fucking abysmal is what it is
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-20
Updated: 2019-01-20
Packaged: 2019-10-13 10:51:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17486765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ossgray/pseuds/ossgray
Summary: Tony Stark is born to the head of Stark Industries, destined to inherit the biggest manufacturer of hero support items in the world. He has money, intelligence, and an ego the size of Japan-- and his father, standing over him in disapproval with every move he makes.He is determined to make his own path, and become a hero the likes of which has never been seen before. UA High seems like the best way to do just that.





	Not A Part Of Your Machine

**Author's Note:**

> Ta-daaaa, a long fic! I've wanted to write this for a while, so here it is. I'm focusing on Maria a lot this chapter, but the rest of the story won't be from her POV, it'll be from Tony's. Basically just this first chapter, really... I felt like this background is important for understanding how the rest of Tony's life is gonna play out. 
> 
> If some of Maria's reactions or inner thoughts seem weird... there's a reason for that ;) The title is from Imagine Dragons' song, 'Machine', it's p good. Also I hope someone catches the pun in this chapter, mwahaha.
> 
> Enjoy, give a kudos and a comment if you're feeling generous!

Sometimes, good things happen in life. When two people love each other very much, and want to create another, smaller person to love, they commit and form a life. From the moment Maria Stark saw those two lines, confirming that she had a soul blooming inside her, her unborn child was given the best treatment and care. No expense was spared; Maria dialed back on the charity galas and PR conferences and devoted herself to learning how to change a diaper, mix formula, properly hold a baby. Howard helped paint the baby’s room in soft blues and yellows, had a crib made with their initials engraved, baby-proofed all the sharp corners and steep drops in the mansion, and picked out a tutor or five to ensure the best education money could buy. 

When Tony Stark was finally born, _three months_ early, bloody and screaming and _healthy_ , Maria cried and cried. She clutched him to her chest and sobbed, because she had a son. She was a mother now, and she had someone to love. 

Some people might say that Tony was born with unfair advantages in life. Quite a few of them, in fact. Those people would be right. Those people also never saw Howard’s face when he first saw his son, swaddled in the arms of his sleeping, exhausted mother. His eyes, a rich, chestnut brown, almost seemed to darken; his mouth twitched like it didn’t know what shape to form until settling on a hard, straight line; his hands clenched and unclenched until he shoved them into his pockets. He wasn’t a young man, but the lines of his face had never been so deep or so numerous. Tony whimpered, once, tiny hands reaching, and his father stood up and left the room. He got a cup of coffee and sat outside, watching the nurses tend to Maria, and decided then what type of father he would be. 

The coffee was bitter and cold, and he took one sip before spitting it out. 

Maria spent another week in the hospital before she was discharged. The doctors hovered over Tony like hawks, monitoring his vitals and making sure he wasn’t going to suddenly die. It was unheard of for a baby born so premature to survive, and survive without severe complications, but Tony was perfectly healthy. Eventually, they were satisfied, and told a relieved Maria that he would be fine.

When they arrived at the Manhattan estate, the staff cooed over Tony’s adorable little face, and he grabbed fingers tightly and looked up with big, dark blue eyes. He gurgled and the maids nearly fell over themselves asking to hold him. Maria said no, she was going to hold him, and they stepped back, understanding. She loved him fiercely, and the terrifying week she had just suffered had further strengthened that love. 

In fact, not many people were allowed to hold Tony except his mother and a close family friend, Jarvis. He had large hands and strong arms, but despite how easily he could hurt him, he only ever treated him gently and with care, murmuring soft words and petting his delicate, peach-fuzzy head. Of course, Howard was also allowed to hold him, but he never asked or tried to. Maria made him, once, and Howard had stood there dumbly with his son wriggling in his arms, trying to return to his mother. She didn’t try again after that; some part of her understood him, and hated itself for it. 

Two weeks after returning from the hospital, the family packed up their bags and moved to Japan. To someone who hadn’t been keeping up with current events, it would have seemed sudden and unexpected, but really, it was a long time coming. One thing built on top of another until it became inevitable. The flourishing economy and the slow but steady rise of pro heroes, especially after All Might’s spectacular debut, made the country very appealing to Stark Industries’ ideas for a hero support division. There was potential there, and Maria was all for moving. She would prefer not to raise her son in America, where tension was thick enough to clog the streets and fill up people’s heads like poison gas after the anti-quirk riots earlier this year. 

And if there were other reasons why she wanted to escape the Manhattan estate, reasons that made her stomach curdle with dread and her heart ache with loss, than no one was none the wiser.

The move was expedited by money and a desire to please, and they had a lovely new property in the countryside in no time. It was an hour or so outside of Tokyo, where the soon-to-be headquarters of the company was set to break ground. The commute wasn’t a problem for Howard, who had been working on designs for a cross-country bullet train to blow the competition out of the water.

The mansion meshed Western architecture with more traditional Japanese designs, forming a seamless harmony with the natural beauty surrounding it. Maria spent more time outside than in, hiking through the beautiful countryside or gardening flowers and herbs. The clean air was so different from the polluted city Manhattan had become, and she brought Tony along with her nine times out of ten, toting him on her back in a baby carrier or setting him down on the porch with Jarvis to mind him, bouncing him on his knee while they watched Maria be the happiest she had been in years. She had forgotten how much she enjoyed working with her hands, and in a place where quirks were readily accepted and even praised, she could let herself be herself.

Maria’s touch could speed up a living thing’s growth by unbelievable amounts. A sapling oak she planted a week ago could grow into a supple teenager in two weeks; if she really tried, she could shorten that to a week and a half. She had only used this a handful of times before; her job had kept her busy managing Stark Industries’ public presence, and it would not have been taken well if the head of PR had showed off her quirk. That responsibility had been handed off to someone else during her pregnancy with Tony, and she trusted the person who held it now to do it properly. Everything in her life had been dropped for her son, and she didn’t regret it one bit. 

Experimentation brought unexpected results, and the description of her quirk was altered slightly after a patch of honeysuckles had withered and died suddenly under her hands. It didn’t speed up growth, it sped up time. It accelerated life cycles and brought them closer to death. 

The revelation was wholly unpleasant. There were no more miracle trees after that. 

* * *

Howard was gone often. The company transfer was going smoothly, and the hero support division that had been in the works for years was gaining traction quickly, but he was kept plenty busy nonetheless. He hardly paid Tony any attention, and Maria worried about them, that they were growing apart, but Howard brushed off her worries when she confronted him. Was she blind? Things were great. Don’t ruin it with your paranoa. Yes, I love you. 

It was fine. 

Jarvis, however, was everything Howard was not. Kind, gentle, and fiercely loyal, he radiated a warm, honeyed love, presenting Tony with only his best self. He explained the world in terms that were easily understandable, laying things out step by step to an enraptured baby. Picture books, block toys, Legos, and Pro Hero figurines were staples in the playroom toy box. Tony really seemed to like the animal-themed heroes; Kraken, High Jump, and Saberwing were among his favourites. Agent K9 took the cake, though, the four-legged heroine being the first one Tony crawled to consistently. 

Tony was safe and loved, but Jarvis thought he might be a bit lonely, with only the staff, Jarvis, and Maria to play with. There were no other kids around, and Howard had neither the desire nor that kind of a relationship with his business partners to set up a playdate. Jarvis had an idea, though, and a few words with Maria settled the matter.

The estate had a few dogs, but they were for Howard and his hunting. Maria wouldn’t ever trust them around her barely seven month-old infant, so she did some research, and went to a breeder to select the cutest, fluffiest puppy she could find. She found a soft, warm, squirming ball of wet kisses and clumsy paws... that just wouldn’t quit whining when she took it away from its family. She couldn’t bear to rip him away so cruelly, so she put him down with a pat on the head and kept looking. Out of the corner of her eye she spotted a tiny, quiet puppy with a cocked head, looking at her from the corner of the kennel she had just passed. Its siblings had lost interest in her after she passed, barking instead at the family browsing a kennel away, but this one was still staring at her. Not barking, just looking, intelligent and quiet.

He was perfect, and Maria was glad Tony seemed to think so, too. Rocket the Newfoundland was a wonderful addition to the family.

The empty spaces seemed less empty now, with a happy puppy to watch over her son, and the ever-present Jarvis to provide companionship and a positive male presence in Tony’s life. The house staff was everything Maria could ask for, helpful and smart. They helped her learn Japanese, and talked to Tony so he would pick it up too. Howard still was away on business more frequently than Maria would like, but when did come home, she could be everything he wanted and more. 

He never acknowledged his son, and Maria decided not to push it. 

* * *

Jarvis was the first to realize that Tony was maybe more intelligent than the average baby. It was more than just a caretaker’s love, wanting to believe that their baby was special; it went beyond that. 

The boy began speaking quickly, far more quickly than what Jarvis thought was normal. At first, he didn’t quite understand what he was saying-- of course, why would he, it was a baby’s babbling-- but once he stopped to listen, he recognized words in the mess. A day of intent listening later and he was amazed; it sounded like English, Italian, and Japanese had been thrown into a blender and pieced back together, phrases in one language and then the next spoken over and over in between Tony’s high-pitched giggles. He was soaking up what he was hearing around him, from his father’s conference calls to his mother’s lullabies, and Jarvis was seeing the result. 

He had a tutor within the week. One appropriate for his age, of course, good with young children. Miss Takemoto Yuki spent two days with him and he knew the alphabet; two more and he could do basic math. Quickly realizing that she had a child genius on her hands, she advised them to start the eleven month old baby on an extensive education program, covering everything from kindergarten to third grade. Maria was thrilled, of course, and so was Jarvis, but Howard was almost indifferent. He waved Takemoto off, signed her paycheck, and told her to make sure his son didn’t grow up an idiot. 

The way he was going, Yuki thought, he’d grow to outsmart them all. 

Maria, meanwhile, had her own, less optimistic suspicions. Was this the result of her quirk? Was she unintentionally maturing him without even meaning to? Or was it something else, something biological? Was his brain developing faster than his body because his mother had the quirk she did? In the way mothers do, she worried and stressed over it. 

She brought Tony to a doctor, who examined him and said he was aging just fine. There was nothing wrong with his development, and he had passed all the normal stages; sitting up, crawling, beginning to walk. Dr. Isha agreed that he was extremely intelligent-- he even had a conversation with him, asking how he was feeling, and would you like apple or orange juice? Tony read the poster tacked to the wall aloud and giggled, and Maria laughed, still nervous, saying he was showing off. 

At her insistence, Dr. Isha ran an MRI-- he wasn’t going to refuse the wife of billionaire Howard Stark, after all-- and examined the results. He was- well, he was floored. He wasn’t looking at the brain of an eleven month-old, he was looking at a the brain of a four year old. 

Dr Isha advised that they speak to a quirk specialist. Either he had some kind of intelligence-based ability, or he was a natural genius. In his professional opinion, Maria had nothing to worry about, and she should be happy that her son had such a head start.

They were directed to Dr Takeda, a genial, smiling person, with short-cropped red hair. They asked about Tony’s family history; signs of a possible quirk; past exposure to mutating or DNA altering quirks. Tony listened intently the whole time, piping in a few times to answer their questions or input what he thought it might be.

“It’s gonna be neat,” he said, not even a year old. 

Dr Takeda was fascinated by this boy. “Oh? And what do you think it might be?”

“Something neat,” he simply repeated. “That means ‘demonstrates skill or pro-, proc-, proficiency.’” He struggled with his pronunciation, and smiled proudly when he said it right.

Dr Takeda reminded Maria that quirks were unpredictable, and the study of them was relatively new. Tony could have a combination of his parents, a quirk that skipped a generation, or something else entirely. There was really no concrete way to tell, but they concluded that his intelligence was most likely a result of his mother’s quirk, Cycle, speeding up his brain development. It wasn’t anything to worry about, since it didn’t seem to be affecting anything else in his body.

“Can I still hold him?” Maria fretted. “Is it- does this mean I can’t touch him?”

“Oh, no, I’m sorry if I gave that impression!” Dr Takeda reassured. “I doubt it’s anything you’re doing currently, the effects were most likely strongest during pregnancy. If you’ve never used Cycle unintentionally before, than there’s no reason to assume you’d start now.” 

Dr Takeda said that the three months missing from her pregnancy were because of her quirk. 

_Because of her quirk._ The rest of their explanation was just static. 

God, what kind of a mother was she? Her son could have died because of her. 

“Oh, _cazzo_ ,” she whispered under her breath. No one heard her. 

She tuned back in when she was leaving the office. “...probably develop earlier than normal, so keep an eye out for that,” Dr Takeda was saying as they ushered them out. “Well, I hope you two have a good day! Feel free to contact me if you have any more questions or want to set another check-up, my doors are always open to this little guy.” They gave Tony’s head a pat, smiled at Maria, and then they were gone. 

When they got back, Maria handed Tony over to Jarvis and said she needed to take care of something. She headed to her room, locked the door, and quietly cried. 

No one was none the wiser.


End file.
